Two reporters had
been investigating violence in Rakhine, from where hundreds of thousands of
Muslim refugees have fled
By Reuters
 |
|
Wa
Lone, left, and Kyaw Soe Oo, right, pictured outside court near Yangon.
Photograph:
Thein Zaw/AP
|
Two Reuters journalists detained in Myanmar
are due to appear in court on Wednesday, when prosecutors could request that
charges be filed against them over an accusation they broke the country’s
Official Secrets Act
Wa Lone, 31, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 27, had worked
on Reuters coverage of a crisis in the western state of Rakhine, where – according
to U.N. estimates – about 655,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled from a fierce
military crackdown on militants.
The reporters were detained on 12 December
after they had been invited to meet police officers over dinner.
The ministry of information has cited the
police as saying they were “arrested for possessing important and secret
government documents related to Rakhine state and security forces”.
The ministry said they “illegally acquired
information with the intention to share it with foreign media” and faced
charges under the British colonial-era Official Secrets Act.
The act dates back to 1923, when Myanmar,
then known as Burma, was a province of British India. It carries a maximum
prison sentence of 14 years.
The reporters have told relatives they were
arrested almost immediately after being handed some documents at a restaurant
by two policemen they had not met before.
The two appeared in court for the first time
on 27 December, when they were remanded for another two weeks. During that
hearing, they were allowed to meet relatives and a lawyer for the first time
since being arrested.
Government officials from some of the world’s
major nations, including the United States, Britain and Canada, as well as top
United Nations officials, have called for their release.
Former US president Bill Clinton also urged
that they be freed immediately. “A free press is critical to a free society –
the detention of journalists anywhere is unacceptable. The Reuters journalists
being held in Myanmar should be released immediately,” Clinton said in a
Twitter post on Monday.
Clinton was US president for much of the
1990s when the United States pressed Myanmar’s then military rulers to release
democracy champion Aung San Suu Kyi from years of house arrest.
Aung San Suu Kyi won a 2015 election and
formed a government in early 2016. She has made no public comment on the
detention of the two Reuters reporters. The government has denied that their
arrests represent an attack on press freedom and her spokesman has said the
case would be handled according to the law.
Human rights group Amnesty International also
called for the immediate release of the two and for freedom of speech to be
respected.
“These arrests have not happened in a vacuum,
but come as authorities are increasingly restricting independent media,”
Amnesty International said in a statement.
“Journalists and media outlets, in particular
those who report on sensitive topics, are living with the constant fear of
harassment, intimidation or arrest. This clampdown on freedom of speech must
end.”
